Venezuelan Prosecutor Says Opposition Leader’s Trial Was a Farce

MEXICO CITY — A few weeks ago, prosecutors in Venezuela won the conviction of a prominent opposition leader who had been charged with inciting violence during antigovernment protests. It was widely seen as a sign that the government of President Nicolás Maduro would continue to pursue a hard line against its opponents — and critics inside and outside Venezuela condemned the trial as being politically motivated.

Now, in an unexpected turn that has the country buzzing, Franklin Nieves, one of the two main prosecutors in the case against the opposition leader, Leopoldo López, has released a video in which he calls the trial a farce and says that he has fled the country.

“I decided to leave Venezuela with my family because of the pressure that I was under from the executive branch and my superiors to continue to defend the false evidence that was used to convict Leopoldo López,” Mr. Nieves says in the video, which was posted on a popular Venezuelan website.

Mr. Nieves says the pressure came as he was expected to help defeat an appeal filed by Mr. López’s lawyers. Mr. López was sentenced to more than 13 years in prison.

“Those who know me know the anguish that I went through, how I couldn’t sleep because of the pain and the pressure that I felt continuing with the farce, continuing this case that unjustly violated the rights of this person,” he says in the nearly four-minute-long video, in which looks directly into the camera while standing in front of a blank wall. He appears slightly nervous.

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Leopoldo LópezCreditFernando Bizerra Jr/European Pressphoto Agency

A lawyer for Mr. López, Juan Carlos Gutiérrez, posted a message on Twitter calling for the conviction to be overturned and for his client to be freed.

The major coalition of opposition parties also called for Mr. López, who is being held in a military prison, to be released in response to Mr. Nieves’s video.

Mr. López, a former mayor of a section of Caracas, the capital, was arrested in February 2014 and charged with inciting violence in connection with a wave of antigovernment protests that swept through the country.

At his trial, which lasted for more than a year, the prosecutors cited studies by two experts who analyzed his speeches and comments on social media, arguing that despite Mr. López’s overt calls for nonviolence, there were subliminal messages that promoted volatile sentiments against the government in his followers.

In September, a judge found Mr. López guilty and handed down the lengthy sentence. International human rights advocates said the trial lacked the most basic guarantees of due process.

Mr. Maduro had called for Mr. López’s arrest and afterward frequently pilloried him in his public speeches, often calling him a monster.

In the video, which appeared online last week, Mr. Nieves makes an appeal to his fellow prosecutors and to judges in Venezuela, saying, “I invite you to tell the truth as I am doing now. I want to do the right thing, stop being afraid and tell the truth. I want you to be brave, raise your voices.”

He also promises to eventually “tell the whole truth” about what had happened “before, during and after” Mr. López’s trial.

A supporter of Mr. López who attended several sessions of the trial, which lasted more than a year, confirmed that the man in the video was Mr. Nieves.

A text message sent to Mr. Nieves’s cellphone number asking if he was in the United States was answered, “Affirmative.” However, it was not possible to confirm whether the response had been written by Mr. Nieves.

The other prosecutor who handled the case with Mr. Nieves, Narda Sanabria, hung up when contacted by telephone. She later responded to a text message, saying “Legally I cannot make any statement related to the case.”

The national prosecutor’s office has not commented on Mr. Nieves’s video.

Many Venezuelans, in particular those who oppose the government, were thunderstruck by Mr. Nieves’s dramatic statement and apparent defection and they pointed to the video as proof that the justice system is controlled by the president and his allies.

William Neuman reported from Mexico City, and Patricia Torres from Caracas, Venezuela.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Venezuelan Prosecutor Says Opposition Leader’s Trial Was a Farce . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe